Nearly 150 Democratic and Republican staffers have signed their names to a petition to halt Friday’s scheduled price increase in the House cafeterias, according to the founder of the website www.stopthepricehike.com .

The 10 percent increase is due to rising food and gas costs, according to the Chief Administrative Office (CAO), which oversees the House eatery vendor, Restaurant Associates (RA).

But the website’s manager, Brian Diffell, says CAO Dan Beard’s allowance of the price change is an example of his disregard for staffers.

“There’s a concern, I think, that you’re seeing a vendor and a House officer operate independently of the process and we’re the ones getting hit by it,” said Diffell, a senior policy analyst in the office of House Minority Whip Roy Blunt (R-Mo.).

Diffell said it is mostly Republicans working on the website, but that staffers from both parties have signed the petition.

Jeff Ventura, spokesman for the CAO, said the price hike reflects the same increase families throughout the country are enduring during these hard economic times.

“This is not the school lunch program,” Ventura said. “I think American taxpayers would find it deeply troubling that, in this economy, a small group of Hill staffers feel they are entitled to receive a special, taxpayer-subsidized exemption from the food price increases every hardworking American family is now struggling with.”

Hummmm....This would be interesting to research, but I got lazy, sorry. I either heard on a conservative talk show or read on the internet that this cafeteria NEVER ran at a profit...so taxpayers were basically SUBSIDIZING these fat cats in Dee Cee to pig out at lunch time all these years. They should be ASHAMED of themselves, considering the money they are stealing out of our checks every week, the yearly salary they are being paid, and the value of their health care benefits and retirement benefits. Personally, I would love the chance to go to Dee Cee and slap some SENSE back into these FOOLS who are supposed to be REPRESENTING us, but keep selling us down the river.

And I heard this story quite AWHILE back...and they are just getting around to raising the prices?
Will it be enough so we are no longer paying these overblown, self-important porkers to eat?

PS: Go to your local coffee shop or pancake house and see what YOU are stuck with paying!!!
Arrogant b*st*rds!!! : (

Hummmm....This would be interesting to research, but I got lazy, sorry. I either heard on a conservative talk show or read on the internet that this cafeteria NEVER ran at a profit...so taxpayers were basically SUBSIDIZING these fat cats in Dee Cee to pig out at lunch time all these years.